The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee appears to have been struck repeatedly in the face and police are investigating who may have damaged the artwork outside of Duke Chapel on the university’s campus in Durham.

Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison and Sheriff's Dept. attorney Paul Gessner say that the dismissal of two Wake jailers in the wake of an inmate's apparent suicide was not directly related to the inmate's death.

More than 150 inmates have died in North Carolina's county jails in the past five years, many of them suicides and a third of them after poor supervision by jailers. A News & Observer investigation uncovers deaths that were ignored and examines the impact of an influx of mentally-ill and drug-addicted inmates who could have been treated elsewhere.

North Carolina's public schools are failing to help thousands of low-income children who have shown they are smart enough to handle advanced work. An unprecedented analysis of seven years of state data shows that a far larger proportion of more affluent students are selected for gifted classes over their low-income peers with the same end-of-grade test scores.

There are a lot of stories about why collegiate players at schools in the Research Triangle choose their jersey numbers. Use the search tool below to sort through through the better-known athletes from Duke, NC State and UNC.

In January, 19 psychiatrists and supervisors at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro received pay raises ranging from 8 to nearly 20 percent, some totaling $40,000. The increases pushed salaries at Cherry well above pay for identical positions at the state's two other mental hospitals.